


A Dangerous Treat

by Aondeug



Category: Chronicles of the Kencyrath - P. C. Hodgell
Genre: F/M, twinswap AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:50:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aondeug/pseuds/Aondeug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twinswap au. The Highlord of the Kencyrath is a demanding "man". One who doesn't take the slights of her brother lightly. The Highlord's "sister" isn't helpless though. What he lacks in claws and titles he makes up for with Dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dangerous Treat

How many times had he danced for her now? He had lost count over the years. The first time he’d been nervous, terribly so. She had been elated, giggling away at him. As though she only half expected for him to comply with the command. The second time had been easier, though wearing the outfit for her still stiffened his back and reddened his cheeks. So many dances down the line and he was no longer a nervous child, not as he had been. Shame and anger still beat down upon him, though.

Again he has been called out of the Women’s Halls to amuse his sister. Led along by one of her Kendar, that horribly tall woman Brier, he thinks of refusing. Surely he could. He had never tried, but he knew that he could refuse; his sister has told him as much on more than one occasion. Still, he doesn’t broach the subject with Brier. Indeed, he hardly speaks at all, simply having her given her an obedient, “Of course”. His sister and the Women’s World have been as successful as Keral and his father in taming him.

 

He comes to the Highlord’s quarters and is led by Brier to a small changing room. She leaves him, as dour looking as ever. Off to inform his sister no doubt. They will probably joke about it, so he feels. Or at the least Jame will try it and Brier with give a grunt of amusement. They’ll chat and talk and joke until at last he was done changing and then Brier would be sent away. The Highlord doesn’t share him. As he undoes the ties at his back he thinks on that. He’s not sure if the fact relieves or annoys him. Both, he thinks.

 

The dress is a tedious thing to remove. It’s so stiff, all of his dresses are. Not just the ones belonging to his aunt, but the ones his sister handpicked for him. There are so many pieces to the thing as well. One can’t simply undo a single set of buttons and be done. Tedious hassle or no he never accepts help with removing the dresses. He never has and he never will. He has to refuse. Partly for his sister’s sake and partly for his own pride. If he can’t have even this moment of strength then what can he have? Precious little and knowing this is his soothes him somewhat.

 

As does the knowledge that he is free of the dress for a time. He likes their look, but he can’t stand wearing the things. The chance to wear something as comfortable as his dance clothes is the one boon to being his sister’s personal erotic dancer. The dress off and set aside he digs out the dancer’s outfit he brought with him from Tai-tastigon. Embarrassingly revealing as the outfit is the clothes had become homely in a way. They are one of the few constants in his life. As well as one of his only ways of asserting control. Memories of his times dancing at the Res aB’tyrr pester him as he dresses. So many men brought to their knees. They’d been made helpless, malleable, for him to do with as he pleased. Albeit during one of his dancer’s highs. The thought sickens him, a knot twisting in his stomach. Too close to that night so long ago with his father. Just a bit of blood from a split lip, enough to force him to stop. There was far too much control. Far too disgusting a sort too, being so similar to the dream spectre of his uncle. That man he has known far too well for having never met him. The man he fears he may become, and which he fears Jame already has.

 

Outfit on he steels himself, taking a deep breath, clenching his hands. He goes over the clothes too, just to make sure each piece is in its proper place and secure. Jame would likely find his dance clothes falling off amusing, but she’ll not get that joy from him today or any day if he can help it. Clothing checked he thinks, as always, of simply going on out. Rushing out to get things over with as soon as possible. He can never bring himself to leave his little room so easily, though. As typical his shame keeps him firmly rooted in place. The feeling has left his legs and his head is light. No, he won’t simply be walking out there. He never can. He always runs through several kantirs first, those calming nigh ritualistic movements. As typical, he runs through several of the postures and forms, slowly and deliberately. It’s better to warm up before a performance besides, his want to bolt like a deer or no. Senethari hadn’t died so he could pull a muscle in front of his sister, the Highlord. Though in truth it is to calm himself, more than protect himself. An annoying thought.

 

As always, the kantirs calm him enough to move. Limbs full of strength again he finally leaves his little room. His sister is seated across the room as always. That ounce of her, the blind Jorin, is in her lap as as always. But unlike always there is another in the room besides himself, Jame, and Jorin. Seated next to Jame is none other than Lord Caineron. Caineron who hates the Highlord almost as much as she hates him. Almost as much as Tori detests him. “Oh there she is. I told you she’d be out soon enough. You just have to be patient with her, Caldane,” his sister says. She’s mocking someone, he’s sure. Him, he’s certain, and Caineron too. Caineron who huffs and mutters something. Tori doesn’t bother to make out what. Something about a chest, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s here at all. He can’t look away from that awful, fat lord for the sheer shock of it all. His sister’s voice pulls him away from his outrage, “Come now, sister. You’re not just going to stand there gaping are you? After you’ve already made our charming guest here wait so?”

 

“No,” he admits, though he knows it is because he never refuses her requests. He can’t. He knows this. It’s his duty now. “Why is he here?” he asks, a bit too curtly so he adds, “the Lord Caineron” for politeness’ sake. He can’t stand the man any longer and he looks hard at his sister instead.

 

“Visiting on lordly business, of course,” she says reclining imperiously, “I felt it only right to entertain him a bit before he heads back home to Restormir after I called him here.”

 

“As entertaining as a lady gawking around in that ridiculous outfit can be.”

 

“Oh hush. She’ll get to her work soon enough. Have you no patience?” she says bitingly. She hates Caineron as much as he still, so he hopes. It is hard to tell what she feels, if she feels anything at all. Seeing the look on Caldane's face she says, “I jest, I jest. Anyway, you can’t leave our treasured guest here waiting forever can you, sister?” He refuses to answer her. Of course he can keep Caineron waiting forever. A fact that she can’t let him have as she says, “Though if you’d prefer I suppose you can head back to the Women’s Halls. I’ll have to find some other way to amuse Caineron but that is your right.”

 

Run away or wait it out? Either way he’s a child, she’s made that apparent. She turns her look back to him from Caineron, smiling knowingly. It is dawning on him, why Caineron is here at all. It’s all a jab, a cleverly timed attack. Oh, she had threatened to end the contract and trade him off to Caineron but he had been right. She’d never do that to him, no matter how much he infuriated her. He’d screamed as much at her and compared her to their uncle Greshan for so much as suggesting it. She loved him enough to not trade him to anyone, let alone Caldane. She also loved him enough to mock him in front of Caldane. Trinity, why had he whined so much? Why had he sworn she was as cruel as their uncle? If only he had shut up as he should have. As she wanted him to.

 

“I can dance,” he answers quickly, too quickly for fear of angering her further, “I will dance.”

 

“Good girl,” she says while stroking Jorin’s back, “You’re in for a treat, Caldane.”

 

A “treat” is what he is because he’d gone and pissed off his sister. And he wasn’t going to deny her of this victory because there was no way for him to do so. Leave or wait or dance she wins by shaming him either way. She takes that away from him as she did everything else. His name, his title, his keep, all of it, and now his right to run and hide too. And so he dances for her again and for Caineron too. She’s taken his right not to.

 

He moves through the kantirs as he has so many times before. Unlike the other times it does not calm him. Normally his dancing soothes him, taking him out of things for a moment. Leaving him in a world of pure movement and routine and nothing else. The calm from his dancer’s high does not come though. He’s too mortified by Caineron watching him for it to come. She has taken the calm from him too. One of the very last things he has to call his own and it is gone as so many other things. Gone, gone, gone like everything else. Father said she’d destroy him and take all from him, and has she ever done so.

 

She has taken everything, everything but one thing. He feels that, knows that there is one thing left that she can never take. There is no thinking about this, simply feeling, plain and clear. Things are never so deliberate and cerebral with the Great Dance, and nothing can ever take it from him. Better yet, it is the one thing he has stolen from her. The Dance was to be hers, but he took her place and so it is his now. Not hers.

  
  


And so he steps into those other, stranger postures, head heavy with a feverish fog. If Caineron speaks or moves he doesn’t know. He can barely tell that of his sister, even as he is so focused on her. All of his mind and body is focused on her and she on him, though she struggles to keep back, to keep out. He does not let up though, and bit by bit she is as entranced as those fools back at the inn had been. Not even the Highlord is safe from the Dance. She’s focused on him, he knows, and her breathing grows heavier. He can feel it, that heaving picking up in pace. She is so, so close now, far closer than she ever has been before. Yes, there’s distance between them physically but there is so little room between him and what truly counts. And he closes those last few physical inches as well, fingers brushing up against her thigh. And her soul, he knows. There it is before him and she is all too powerless to stop him, he feels. All she can manage is a feeble, “Stop.”

 

Stop he does. He steps back from her, fog leaving his mind slowly. He’d had an arm around her neck, the other hand resting on her leg. He’d been snaking his way into her lap and his face was close enough to kiss her if he so chose. Or if she did. He isn’t sure when this had happened. He never is. The fog leaves her no more slowly than it does him seemingly. She purses her lips and draws in a deep breath. “I don’t think we’ll be giving Caineron that much of a show,” she says. There’s a touch of her usual confidence, but her voice is so much weaker than normal.

 

Caldane is saying something, he is not sure what. His thoughts are too muddled to peel apart any words but hers. It is slowly dawning on him though, under the haze of it all. A thrill of terror builds up. He’d forced her to heel, as he had their father so many years ago. As he had all those men in Tai-tastigon. And he’d almost taken so much more from her. He mumbles something, a leave taking of a sort, and he bolts.

 

“I told you she was something special, Caineron,” he hears her say as he hides behind the door of his little room. He can hear her so well even now because he is still so close, too close. She’s still too close and he drops to the floor and pulls his knees to his chest. He hugs them tightly and digs his nails into the fabric of his pants. Good God he had been too close. Tried to pull everything from her, or at the very least he threatened her with as much. Isn’t that what the Judge had criticized him for? Isn’t that what he feared of himself?

 

“Can’t say I didn’t have fun though,” she says.

 

Can’t say he didn’t either.

 

And that thought sickens him.

 

Maybe Father had been right. Maybe he was their dear, sweet uncle Greshan.

 

Because he can’t say he didn’t have fun.


End file.
